91, 4th ed.(Paris).

On February 18, 1863, after wasting four precious months, at an enormous
cost of money and prestige, General Forey appeared before Puebla.* The
procrastination of the French commander had given the Mexican government
time to elaborate the defense. General Zaragoza had died, in the full
blaze of his glory, in the month of September. His successor, General
Jesus Gonzalez Ortega, had now under his command a fairly organized army
of twenty-two thousand men. The main trouble was the scarcity of arms.
The guns were mostly old rejected muskets, and I was told that during
the siege unarmed bodies of men waited to use the arms of the slain or
wounded. But the place had been strongly fortified; this time it was to
be war in earnest.

* General Forey explained his extraordinary procrastination by
complaining that the minister of war had failed to supply him with a
sufficient amount of ammunition. See Colonel Loizillon, "Lettres sur
l'Expedition du Mexique," p. 101.

The town was built in blocks. Each block, fortified and defended by the
besieged, must be fought for and carried by assault, at terrible cost of
life on the part of the French, whose close ranks were fired upon with
murderous effect from the roofs and windows on both sides of the
streets.

The episodes of the contest recall those of the siege of Saragossa, when
the Spaniards so fiercely resisted the French forces; only at Puebla the
cruel struggle lasted two whole months.* To quote a French officer, it
was "a noble defense, admirably organized."